Southeast Europe was “trapped” this summer under a mass of warm subtropical air coming from West Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.
Jelena Popovic loves summer and everything that comes with it, including heat. But this year has been too much. “This summer has been too hot, you couldn’t walk around the city,” says Popovic, a resident of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. “It was like a tropical summer, like if we lived in africa and not in Europe”.
This is how a large part of the Balkans, a region in southeastern Europe accustomed to hot summers, has experienced this summer. This year, previous records were broken with repeated heat waves and some almost completely dry months of July and August.
According to experts, the summer of 2024 in the Balkans was the hottest since measurements began more than 130 years ago. Meteorologists explained that long periods with temperatures above 30ºC that did not drop below 20ºC during the night caused average temperatures to reach new highs.
“Summer usually means an exchange of hot days with high temperatures and then a pause after five or six days with rain and storms,” said Serbian meteorologist Nedeljko Todorovic.
“But this only happened in June. Practically all of July and August it didn’t rain while the high temperatures persisted.
This summer has been the hottest on record on Earth
Climate scientists say global warming caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels has led to higher temperatures, and the world has recently recorded 13 consecutive monthly heat records.
The European climate service Copernicus reported on Friday that the summer of 2024 was also the hottest on Earth ever recorded, making it even more likely that this year will end up being the hottest year ever measured by humanity.
Southeast Europe was “trapped” this summer under a warm subtropical air mass from West Africa and the Mediterranean Sea area, explained Goran Pejanovic, from the Hydrometeorological Service of Serbia.
“We had four heat waves… the most intense in July lasted from July 5 to 21, for almost three weeks without a drop of rain“he said. Overall, this summer in Serbia has been 3.3ºC warmer than average, he added.
In Slovenia, an alpine nation bordering Austria and Italy, average summer temperatures They rose 2.5ºC compared to the previous period to 2020, according to the country’s Environment Agency.
The summer in Slovenia passed without the colder periods than They are normal in the mountainous countryaccording to the report. The record temperatures were not recorded in the lowlands, but at higher altitudes in the Julian Alps, while temperatures across the country remained above 30ºC in early September.
“In Bosnia, all records were also broken” in terms of the number of very warm nights and days. These tripled in some areas compared to last year, which held the previous record, said Bakir Krajinovic of the Bosnian Hydrometeorological Institute.
Neighboring Croatia recorded temperatures highest ever recorded in the Adriatic Sea, which also reached 30ºC in some areas.
Heat waves are getting longer and hotter
Last year it was the hottest ever recorded worldwideas man-made climate change and the natural El Niño weather phenomenon, which warms parts of the Pacific, combined to reach sweltering high temperatures.
Heat waves are hotter, long and frequentand some parts of the world also experience longer and more frequent droughts. The planet has warmed an average of 1.2ºC since the pre-industrial era.
ADVERTISINGThe heat in the Balkans has dried up rivers in Bosnia and Serbiahas sparked forest fires in Croatia, North Macedonia and Albania, withered crops and scorched farmland across the region.
The increasingly hot nights make people’s bodiesas well as animals and plants, cannot cool down to face the day. This is even more extreme in large cities, where concrete buildings radiate the heat accumulated during the day at night.
Meteorologists in Montenegro said that night temperatures in some cities They reached 29ºC.
Hydroelectric problems and devastating fires
Although it was good for the tourist industry on the Albanian coast, the very hot summer It was bad for agriculture and energy production. Almost 98% of Albania’s energy comes from hydroelectric plants that were paralyzed by the months-long drought.
ADVERTISINGNorth Macedonia suffered about 2,000 forest fires in the last three months, three times more than in 2023. The fires destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of forests. Emergency manager Stojanche Angelov warned that “it’s not over yet… if it doesn’t rain soon, we will have forest fires until November.”
Dozens of towns and cities in Serbia suffered drinking water restrictions because of the drought. Soldiers hauled water tanks into the country’s southwestern mountains for thirsty cattle and horses.
In the north, the salt lake of Rusanda, whose mud is used in medical therapiesdried completely, turning into a gray surface like the moon. Jovica Mudric, from the local medical center, said they had to pour water from tanks to make mud for the patients.
“It’s not the first time it’s happened, but never like this year,” he said. “I know everyone likes summer, but it would be good for us to rain“.
ADVERTISINGKonstantin Testorides in Skopje, North Macedonia, Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, Sabina Niksic in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Predrag Milic in Podgorica, Montenegro, contributed to this report.
